Right and Wrong by Hoku Lani – Non-Fiction

The Bible was not written in one specific year or in a single location. The Bible is a collection of writings, and the earliest ones were set down nearly 3,500 years ago.
The first five books of the Bible are attributed to Moses and are commonly called the Pentateuch which literally means “five scrolls”.

Moses lived between 1,500 and 1,300 BC, though he recounts events in the first eleven chapters of the Bible that occurred long before his time such as the creation and the flood. These earliest accounts were handed on from generation to generation in songs, narratives, and poetry.

In those early societies there was no writing as yet and people allegedly passed on these oral accounts with great detail and accuracy. The earliest writing began when symbols were scratched or pressed on clay tablets.

The Egyptians refined this technique and developed an early form of writing known as hieroglyphics. The allegedly Moses was “educated in all the learning of the Egyptians”, so he would have been familiar with the major writing systems of his time. All this leads to the conclusion that the earliest writings in the Bible were set down around 1,400 BC. The Bible mentions bestiality in four different passages.

Also consider that Israeli archaeologists Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman dispelled any illusions that their digs had verified the story of the Exodus:  “The process that we describe here is, in fact, the opposite of what we have in the Bible: the emergence of early Israel was an outcome of the collapse of the Canaanite culture, not its cause. And most of the Israelites did not come from outside Canaan – they emerged from within it. There was no mass Exodus from Egypt. There was no violent conquest of Canaan. Most of the people who formed early Israel were local people – the same people whom we see in the highlands throughout the Bronze and Iron Ages. The early Israelites were, irony of ironies, themselves originally Canaanites!

So no evidence of the Exodus or Moses, yet the Bible lists four passages prohibiting Bestiality, written between 1500-1300BC, yet the practice of human-animal sex began at least in the Fourth Glacial Age. This was between 40,000-25,000 years ago, if not earlier. Cave drawings from the stone age demonstrate that prehistoric ancestors had frequent sexual relations with animals. Paintings and carvings of human-animal sexual acts in ancient religious temples also indicate the preoccupation of ancient men with bestiality. As for ancient civilizations, there was evidence of bestiality in the Ancient Near East, Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, and Ancient Rome, but with varying legal consequences: Whereas some cultures did not punish bestiality at all, others subjected the bestiality and the animal to death.

Let’s review these four passages from the Bible as follows:

EXODUS 22:19
“Anyone who has sexual relations with an animal must be put to death.”

LEVITICUS 18:23
“Do not have sexual relations with an animal and defile yourself with it. A woman must not present herself to an animal to have sexual relations with it; that is a perversion.”

LEVITICUS 20:15-16
“If a man has sexual relations with an animal, he must be put to death, and you must kill the animal. If a woman approaches an animal to have sexual relations with it, kill both the woman and the animal. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.”

DEUTERONOMY 27:21
“Cursed is the man who has sexual relations with any animal.”

From these four passages, it is abundantly clear that, according to the Bible, bestiality is a horrible, unnatural, and abominable sin or is it?

BABYLONIA

Bestiality was practiced in Babylonia, the ancient Empire in Mesopotamia. In the Code of Hammurabi, King Hammurabi (1955-1913 BC) proclaimed death for any person engaging in bestiality. However, during the Spring Fertility Rites of Babylon, dogs and other animals were used for constant orgy for seven days and seven nights. The Book of Leviticus describes bestiality as being very widespread in the country of Canaan, which is perhaps why Hebrews later considered sexual relations with animals a way of worshiping other Gods (similar to homosexuality) and put the bestialist and animal to death.

EGYPTIANS & GREEKS

Ancient Egyptians and Ancient Greeks both practiced bestiality and believed that it cured nymphomaniacs, but had differing legal consequences for engaging in human-animal sexual contact. Ancient Egypt portrayed bestiality on tombs and in their hieroglyphics, while Ancient Greece often used themes of bestiality in their mythology (e.g. Leda and the swan.) Ancient Greeks and Ancient Egyptians both incorporated bestiality into their religious practices. Ancient Egyptians engaged in “worshipful bestiality” with the Apis bull in Memphis, Egypt, and with goats at the Temple of Mendes. Similarly, Ancient Greeks engaged in bestiality during religious celebrations and festivals. Although several Egyptian kings and queens had a reputation for engaging in bestiality, and Egyptian men were known to have sexual intercourse with cattle, other large domesticated animals, crocodiles, and goats, bestiality was still punishable in Egypt by a variety of torture mechanisms, leading to death. In contrast, bestiality was never punishable in Ancient Greece.

ROMANS

Like the Ancient Greeks, the Ancient Romans also incorporated bestiality themes into their mythology. Although bestiality was particularly widespread among the shepherds, Roman women were also known to keep snakes for sexual purposes. Bestiality flourished as a public spectacle in ancient Rome, where the rape of women (and sometimes men) by animals were used to amuse the audience at the Colosseum and Circus Maximus. Similar to Ancient Egyptian leaders, many Roman emperors and their wives were known to engage in bestiality or to enjoy watching others engage in bestiality, including Emperor Tiberius and his wife Julia, Claudius, Nero, Constantine the Great, Theodora, and Empress Irene.

MIDDLE EAST & AFRICA

Many cultures in the Arab countries, the Middle East, and Africa, had beliefs or customs that encouraged bestiality among its men. For example, the belief that bestiality would lead to enlargement of the human penis was fairly widespread. Arab men believed that intercourse with animals increased virility, cured diseases, and enlarged their penises. Likewise, among the Muslims in Morocco, fathers encouraged sons to practice sexual intercourse with donkeys to make their penises grow. Muslims believed that sex with animals prevented men from committing adultery. Turks also believed that sex with a donkey makes the human penis grow larger. Some nomad tribes in Africa incorporated intercourse with cattle as a ritual of passage for young males. Adolescent males in Ibo (Nigerian tribe), for example, had to “successfully” copulate with specially selected sheep in front of a circle of elders.

NORTH AMERICA

Among other tribes, it was custom for hunters to engage in sexual acts with freshly slain animals while they were still warm. This custom was seen among the Plains Indians, the Canadian Indian tribe of the Saulteaux, and the Crow Indians. As for the Native Americans and Eskimos, bestiality varied from tribe to tribe, but was largely socially acceptable and went unpunished among Navajo Indians, Crow Indians, Hopi Indians, Sioux, Apache, Plains Indians, the Canadian Indian tribe of the Saulteaux, as well as the Kupfer and Copper Eskimos.

SUMMARY

Taking into account the widespread practice of bestiality from the dawn of civilization, and the considerable variation in terms of laws either regulating or punishing the practice, it is not clear whether there is a human psychological mechanism that has evolved to condemn the practice. Why is bestiality condemned so strongly? According to the Bible bestiality lowers humanity to nothing more than an animal, a beast which is unable to distinguish right from wrong, natural from unnatural, love from lust.

As a Priestess of Lilith, I know the difference between what is right from wrong, what is natural, and know that Lust is thousands of times better than love.